Better Than a Thousand Explanations

During the winter holiday season five years ago, when his inquiring daughter was a wide-eyed fourth grader, Hassaun Ali Jones-Bey explained the meaning of Ramadan to her by weaving together stories of Muslims, non-Muslims, his own childhood Christmases, and the Qur'an.

An author, convert to Islam, and self-described musical storyteller for peace, Hassaun Ali thought that telling stories about Ramadan through humor would be a positive and creative answer to his daughter's initial nagging question: "Why don't Muslims celebrate Christmas and exchange gifts, Dad?"

The stories came to take the shape of an illustrated novel, titled "Better Than a Thousand Months: An American Muslim Family Celebration," which seeks to tell the story of Ramadan,

(The Night of Perfect Measure), and the Qur'an through text and pictures. Hassaun Ali's book has been Amazon.com's most popular book about Ramadan.

Hassaun Ali says it was important for him to make Ramadan "an American Muslim celebration of family, communication, and spiritual meaning" for his children. Frustrated by the lack of cultural symbols for American Muslims, Hassaun Ali says he felt pressured by the dominant Christian and commercial tone to the holidays to explain why his family's holiday was different.

Christened in a Nazarene Protestant church and raised in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., Ali acquired an early taste for spiritual and cultural variety. He says he celebrated his 10th birthday as a Nazarene Protestant, his 20th as a Roman Catholic and an engineer, his 30th as a dancing Sufi and Navy pilot, and his 40th as a Sunni Muslim and writer.

"I asked myself: How am I supposed to express this faith beyond ritual? And what is my own understanding of Islam?" says the Fremont, Cal.-based writer and folk guitarist. "The book is an expression of my approach to Islam. Religion is something I do to myself. We can use scriptures to become peaceful and enlightened or we can use them to deny others and oppress them."

"Better Than a Thousand Months," narrated by the African-American Muslim father of a large family, features an almost Socratic dialogue between the father and his children that occurs from sunset to sunrise.

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